MAA Berkeley Lake — Local services in Duluth

BEWARE! They have ROACHES and are unapologetic. If I could give this place 0 stars I would. We were moving from our house into an apartment temporarily and were on a very tight schedule due to work travel and needing to prepare the home for the buyer. Colonial took advantage of this situation and they gave us keys to an apartment infested with roaches on 5/16. According to a letter they sent us from a lawyer (this comes later), they had only treated this apartment for the roaches on 5/15. I am currently pregnant and have a 2 year old son and this is what we were unknowingly moving into. On 5/17 when I returned to town (husband had started the move), I discovered the roaches and reported to the office. Again they had someone come and treat the place and everyone involved assures my husband that it will be okay for us to move in. MY husband moves more of our belongings on 5/20 and I go there after work to actually begin living there and there are roaches crawling out of the light sockets and just coming out from EVERYWHERE! We decide we have to terminate our lease and go elsewhere because not only is this gross but it is not safe. Oh and when we left the place, there was a roach crawling on my child! They say they will speak to management about paying for our move and refunding all monies paid to them. On 5/21 management tells us they do not want to pay for us to move but rather offer us a different unit in their complex. We felt we would be fools to accept another unit in this place after what had occurred without God telling us himself that it was okay, so we respectfully declined. My husband has to go out of town for work on 5/22 and this is my birthday as well. We are also traveling out of town for the weekend for the holiday. We find a place to live and decide to rent a truck for 6 days in order to fumigate our things so they can be safe to be brought into our new place. This is how I spent my birthday, spending a ton of money and time to get my things out of this disgusting apartment. I at this point am also using my PTO that I have saved for my maternity leave to take care of these issues. Upon our return I let management know that I would like to discuss reimbursement for the movers, rental trucks, steam cleaning of furniture, etc that we have had to pay since they KNOWINGLY gave us an unsuitable apartment. Management says they will call back and instead they send us a letter from a lawyer as if we had done something wrong! Allow me to make a quote from the letter from the lawyer "In your case you may have continued to see intermittent roaches, but, according to witnesses who visited the unit, only a couple of roaches were visible during the days of May when the unit was treated and you stayed in a hotel room." Only a couple!? In what world is this okay!? I wish I could post the whole letter here. We ended up being out of about $2000 between movers, trucks, off days, hotel stays, etc. during this nightmare of a situation and they would not reimburse us for any of it outside of our deposit and prorated rent. The first weekend they agreed to pay for our hotel stays. They did not even pay for this because we wanted to discuss compensation for other monies we were out of. At the end of the day I am grateful that we are blessed and were able to get out of the situation without their monetary support. It is unfortunate that some people would be forced to accept the situation. So as a warning, do yourself a favor and stay FAR FAR AWAY from this community! All they care about is leasing these units, they are not about the people at all. They do not keep their word either. We have several pictures and videos of these roaches that witnesses says were...

I moved into these apartments a few weeks ago because they had great reviews & all of the bad reviews were from so many years ago.

That was a bad choice.

From day one, I’ve had issues on top of issues. They are trying to fix them, but it’s three weeks later & issues like my cabinets not opening without also opening the drawers should not still be issues.

Also, I have no idea how no idea review mentions the BUGS. I was told that my unit had brand new carpet. There are tiny black jumping bugs, which I’m pretty sure are fleas, that are in the carpet. I don’t own any pets & I never have. Also, in the three weeks I’ve lived here, I’ve killed at least 40 bugs. There was a WATER BUG ON MY FACE. There’s cockroaches climbing on the ceilings. There’s spiders everywhere. CENTIPEDES. Bugs IAN EVER SEEN BEFORE.

The day I moved in, the unit hadn’t been cleaned. There were PEE STAINS on the toilet. There was a DEAD SNAKE. There were dead spiders & cockroaches throughout the apartment & in the carpet. They sent cleaners who somehow missed these insects, leaving me to spend the day picking up live & dead bugs from around my new apartment.

Members of the leasing office are out of town for weeks at a time, meaning nothing can get solved in a timely manner or with the same person, constantly repeating yourself to whomever decided to work that week.

The stove didn’t work for the first week. The toilet leaked for the first week. The front door had large gaps that allowed the light from the inside of the apartment to be viewed from the outside even with the door locked & closed. While I am appreciative that these did get fixed, the time that it took to get fixed as well as the fact that these were even issues moving in are unacceptable, especially considering the price of rent. I had put in work orders & they were all immediately marked as complete without anyone entering my home. It is only after emails & surveys were completed & sent that I received any assistance. Also, appliances in general are just in bad shape. My fridge is wobbly & has damage along the door. The dryer has dried on, unremovable gunk. The closet door opens so loudly. I had to put cornstarch on all of my cabinets because they painted & closed them so they stuck.

Also, the front gate hasn’t worked since the day I moved in, so since that’s one of their selling points, that is disappointing. I was given a tour of the apartments by walking through buildings so I didn’t know about the 8 speed bumps until after I signed the lease & made the first drive to my unit. It is definitely excessive. The speed bumps are also huge, like to the point that even if you go super slow, there’s a chance your car will get scraped. Obviously not a fixable issue, but I wish my tour wouldn’t have been a walking tour because those 8 speed bumps would have been a large factor in my choice to sign a lease.

I am hoping that my experience changes soon, but for now, I am scared to sleep at night without bugs crawling on me or a snake slithering in or fleas giving me some disease. This is completely unacceptable, & I know that the people in the leasing office would not want to live under these circumstances.

I am only writing this to share my experience, since the multitude of good reviews is the only reason that I’m in this situation.

I will update my review if my experience does change around & this past month of horror is...

Hello Everyone! Due to some personal problem I encountered in 2015, I was forced to go and look for an apartment to live. God being so good and faithful brought me to Colonial Grand at Berkeley Lake now known as MAA Berkeley Lake. I suddenly got a phone call from Emily, the assistant property manager asking if I was still look for an apartment. I responded yes, I am. Sure enough I went after work. I was very happy with their set up.

I could attest to the fact that Emily is really very understanding and extremely very helpful. She's is so very nice that even before I was eventually signed up for the lease, I felt so very much at home despite the pain I was going through at that moment in 2015.

To talk about the property manager, Gigi Suggs, she's so very very understanding and caring. If you have any problem, she takes time to listen to you and does everything in her power to ensure you're properly taken care of. The technicians are so friendly and knowledgeable. They are on point and fast when it comes to taking care of anything that needs to be taken care of in your apartment if you request for it.

About the apartment itself, for me, though it is an apartment, it feels more or less like an home to me. Why? Because it's big, clean, quiet, has basic amenities needed, and they usually have people take care of whatsoever needs to be taken care of most of the time. People are extremely friendly and it's very secured.

Personally, I could recommend this apartment to anyone looking for a very good apartment to live in. Like I wrote at the very top, I have been here since 2015 and I truly cannot say I have any major complaints against anyone or anything. That shows how good the management takes good care of the people and the apartment...